On account of this abundance of ling a strange and lovely appearance is produced in some favourable years, when the flowers are in great profusion and all the plants blossom at one time. That most beautiful sight of the early spring, when the bloom of the wild hyacinth forms a sheet of azure colour under the woodland trees, is here repeated in July, but with a difference of hue both in the trees above and in the bloom beneath. [Sidenote: Wolmer Forest] In May, Wolmer is comparatively flowerless, and there is no bright colour, except that of the earth itself in some naked spot. The water of the sluggish {205} boggy streamlets in the forest, tributaries of the well-named Dead Water, takes a deep red or orange hue from the colour of the soil. The sand abounds with ironstone, which in the mass is deep rust-red- and purple-coloured. When crushed and pulverised by traffic and weather on the roads, it turns to a vivid chrome yellow. In the hot noonday sun the straight road that runs through the forest appeared like a yellow band or ribbon. That was a curious and novel picture, which I often had before me during the excessively dry and windy weather in May--the vast whity-blue, hot sky, without speck or stain of cloud above, and the dark forest covering the earth, cut through by that yellow zone, extending straight away until it was lost in the hazy distance. Even stranger was the appearance when the wind blew strongest and raised clouds of dust from the road, which flew like fiery yellow vapours athwart the black pines. [Sidenote: The "Selborne mob"]